1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to user authentication. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for associating a universal user identification with one or more domain specific identifications of the user.
2. Background Art
Consumers are increasingly turning to online providers when shopping for goods and services. In an effort to protect the personal and financial information required to complete an online transaction, providers of goods and services typically provide a secure network domain and require that the consumer participate in creating a user identity specific to the provider and their secure network domain. This user identity may consist of potentially sensitive personally identifiable information such as an address, telephone number, credit card information, email address, and the like. In addition, the consumer may be required to create log-in credentials such as a username and password to authenticate their identity to the provider when engaging in a transaction using the secure domain.
In a conventional approach to managing a user identity within a secure provider domain, the potentially sensitive consumer information and consumer credentials are relationally linked together by the provider in the form of a unique provider defined consumer identification (consumer ID). Across a network, such as the Internet, for example, a consumer may have a unique user identity and related unique provider generated consumer ID that is domain specific and associates them only to the secure domain of the respective provider, for each provider with which the consumer interacts. As a result, in such a conventional regime, should a provider wish to share transaction information for a given consumer with one or more other providers, they are unable to not do so without sharing consumer credentials or other potentially sensitive information to identify and link them.
Although there have been efforts in the conventional art to implement a universal network ID, such as through use of the OpenID format, for example, those endeavors have generally been limited in their effectiveness. For instance, several trusted third-party identity providers presently exist and are capable of providing an authentication interface and a service verifying a recognized user's identity for more than one secure provider domain. However, because of the number trusted third-party identity providers in existence and the absence of coordination among them, most users derive little more than single sign-on functionality from existing approaches to providing universal identification. In addition, because user's typically acquire more than one universal ID from more than one existing trusted third-party identity provider, the user's profile is likely to be fragmented and distributed among his/her several so called universal IDs. Moreover, because there is no coherent approach for associating the multiple universal IDs acquired by the user from different trusted third party identity providers, there is no mechanism for collecting that fragmentary information and associating it with a single user.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a solution for associating a universal network ID of a consumer with one or more domain specific IDs that associate the consumer with the respective secure domains established by individual network based providers of goods and/or services.